Who Am I?

   
Where is my place in the world universe? Always one of the biggest questions that goes through a teenager's mind during and after puberty. It's not an easy question to solve overnight and maybe most never find out an answer until later in life. I have always been put in a label that I felt like I never belonged in but since it was established day one it never left me. Breaking out of the image people set you in is hard to get out of then trying to prove who you really are is even harder.

     I have never really thought of how I was before middle school. Like I never noticed my personality, social status, the way I looked, how people thought of me. I do remember myself being the kid who had anger issues and would get suspended from school because I screamed, threw desks, and just ignored any rules in general. I was the bad kid who would explode any second of the day at school but was quiet and reserved at home. To this day I still don't know why from preschool to 8th grade I had to act this way and I may never know. Otherwise I was a normal kid who didn't have to really worry about anything besides homework and wondering what junk food I could eat. Besides being the bad kid, I was also known for being smart. I had a great memory when it came to tests, I could understand complex problems that other kids had problems with, and in a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde case teachers would use me as an example of what a modeled student should be. I never liked when that happened because I always felt that it made people think you were a good two shoes but now that I think about it there's nothing with being recognized for doing what you're suppose to do and standing out from others who don't.

    When middle school came around, started to become more aware of how people thought of me since kids love to point out what's wrong with you if it doesn't look like what they consider "normal". I now realized that I'm a nerd for getting better grades than everybody else, if you don't look a certain way then you get rejected and get lower in the school social chain. I somehow became an over thinker. Every move I did is judged by all my peers, my body gets all awkward out of nowhere and I'm suddenly 10x shyer than what I usually am. Self conscious, over thinking, awkward, nerdy. Not a great start to establishing who I am.

     I hated making conversations with anybody in high school. I talked too fast,I stumbled over my words, I was boring. For a long time I always felt I had nothing to talk about. Never getting a chance to go to parties, experience hanging out with a group of friends. It seemed so easy for people to make friends left to right. I don;t know why it never rubbed off on me but it was so hard to make a good impression. I saw myself as invisible even though people could see me. At school I never belonged to a group, I drifted in between different groups with different social standings. It sounds good at face value. Being a chameleon who could hang with the nerds but also be cool with the jocks. But it left me feeling like I never belonged anywhere. I never spent time with anybody from school outside of it so they developed their friendships stronger while I didn't relate with any of them that well. Same with outside of school, I saw myself as the odd man out at home. No one had the same interests as me, no one was close to my age, I am one of 6 siblings. 4 younger sisters, 1 older brother. My sisters were too young for me to hang with and extremely annoying while I never really had time to spend with my older brother. In my extended family it was worse. We view ourselves as a close knit, huge family but that was where I really saw my invisibility. I never hung out with cousins because majority of them were 5 years and older and/or lived too far from me. At family functions I saw everyone greet each other and laugh and hug while I was skipped over like I wasn't there. I saw my family close but without me, everybody had somebody but not me. If it wasn't for my close friend who happened to live next door to me at that time, I probably would be a shut in or just completely give up on a social life.

     Even through all of this, I realized after I got out of school that I was well liked by basically everybody. People said I was really funny, loud, friendly,and that I was a great listener. Numerous of people came to me have to me to vent. They felt like I was trustworthy and approachable enough to discuss their problems and never have anybody else know about it. That's one thing that I always liked about me. I would listen and even provide comments to try to make them feel better or answers to what they should do in the situation they provided. I never thought I gave great advice, my over thinking would always get in the way of everything in my life. Maybe my purpose in life was to help others by just being there for them, maybe I wasn't as bad as I thought I was. I continued to be there for those who came to me to vent even until this very day. I like to check on those I haven't talked to in a long time just to see how they been. I was like a "dad" checking on his kids.

     I slowly started to notice something one sided that continued to happened: whenever I needed those same people to vent, they never seemed to have the time of day for me. I had all these problems or just things to get off my chest but I never felt as if anybody heard me. It was as if I was talking to a brick wall. I realize that nobody ever seems to check on me the same way I would do. I was that person who always had to initiate conversations in texts to those I haven't communicated in a while, I remembered birthdays and made sure to let them know while mine was forgotten, I check back on situations that happened to them and see how everything was but I dealt with situations myself. Once you see that you build one sided relationships like that, you kind of remove yourself and stop making efforts. You thought you built something with people but you can't even get a "how are you doing?" Despite this, I still check on people sometimes. I've learned that you shouldn't expect to get something in return every time you do something nice.